On September 12th we toured the Wychwood Barns with Crystal Luxmore from WalkTO. We also stopped by to see the new Music in the Barns studio and met with it's owner, Carol Gimbel. Our October tour will be announced shortly.

Join us on August 8th for a Free Gallery tour in the Distillery District with Crystal Luxmore, founder and director of WalkTO

The tour will last about 1 hour and we will visit 3-4 galleries in the Distillery.

Four years ago, the month and the location were the place of our first tour - it is one of our classics and we look forward to seeing you.

Below are pictures of our passed events.


Distillery District


Luminato 2010


Luminato 2009


MOCCA

The "Play me, I'm Yours" project has reached Toronto. 41 pianos are placed around the city for people to play.

This is not only in our city but happening around the world - for more details about the project have a look at the street pianos website - some of the stories are just beautiful.

For all the Toronto Locations click here

Every year the Harboufront present a series of wonderful concerts at the Toronto Music Garden.

Concerts take place on most Sunday afternoons and Thursday early evening. For a detailed list of the performances click here.

The Fringe festival is on from July 4-15th. Each year they offer a wonderful daily selection of theater for children. For details on this years schedule click here .

Below are images from "Something from Nothing" and "Super Secret Subway Society"

Finding quality, adaptable and elegant clothes during pregnancy and especially after is quite a challenge, especially if we want to add an element of style and classic elegance.

We will take this section to highlight some of our findings as it is a continuous quest to find the perfect pieces to add to our wardrobe.

Our first feature is this great dress at Parade Boutique on the Danforth.

A Parade original and available only on their store - it is stylish, comfortable, offers strong support and is very flattering.

It is also available in solid bright pink and solid black. Breast feeding friendly top half. Pregnancy and after pregnancy dress. Stretchy, Viscose/polyester, washable.



Parade is located at 261 Danforth Ave.
or join their Facebook
or call them at 416-461-8833.

It goes without saying is the Creative Finding of the week - so we tried to go further into the festival and find some great events which could be enjoyed during the day with the little ones.

We found the Lunchtime Illumination which are happening daily at the David Pecaut square on King Street where there is a talk and a concert from 12-1.30 daily from June 8th-15th.

For more details visit the Luminato site



Here are other activities targeted directly at Families:

FAMILY PROGRAMS
At selected family-friendly events throughout the Festival, BUNCH with Rec Room will be on-site with creative fun for the whole family!

Toronto Carretilla Initiative
Sunday, June 10, The Distillery Historic District, 55 Mill Street, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM
Saturday, June 16, Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Avenue, 11:00 AM-2:00 PM

FREE

Austrian artist Rainer Prohaska takes on the Toronto food scene, dispersing mobile
kitchens throughout the city and assembling them into larger sculptures with the
Toronto Carretilla Initiative. The public is invited to collectively prepare and
partake in a meal. Prohaska's project links Luminato's food and visual arts
programs, exploring our relationship to food, and to each other.

Visit the Family Programming tent for on-site activities at The Distillery Historic
District and Evergreen Brickworks and create a visual family cookbook using
specially designed food images, and create imaginative food creations in the
Carretilla-inspired play kitchen.

Family Night at The Encampment
Saturday, June 9, Fort York National Historic Site, 250 Fort York Blvd, 5:30-7:30 PM
FREE
Families will sit around a bonfire and experience spontaneous musical performances
and multilingual storytelling. Once children have "found" stories that have been
placed around the site, select stories are told around the bonfire. When the gates
open, families are led on a special tour of The Encampment that focuses on visiting
the tents that relate to the stories they've been told.

Luminato Family Activity Guides
At selected family-friendly performances and events the Luminato Family Activity
Guides offers families information about the artists with related activities
designed to enhance their Festival experience. These will be available at selected
Luminato events, and available on June 8th as a free download from www.luminato/luminate

Being a big photograph lover and having lived in NY for close to 2 years it is no surprise that I was very excited about the AGO Berenice Abbott: photographs exhibit. The exhibit features images from the "Changing New York" body of work which was taken between 1935-39.

There is much happening at the AGO - between Picasso, Zhan Huan and Ian Bazter& - this is another exhibit to add to the list to see. The exhibit is on from May 23rd-August 12th, 2012.



Art Strollers will be announcing a tour of the exhibit shortly.

Click here for details about the exhibit.

Music in the Barns presents Classical for Kids” with David Amram onSunday, May 20, 3 PM, Theatre Direct Studio, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street
$5 at the door - First Come First Serve

This is the third in a series of concerts offered by Music in the Barns. Carol Gimbel, it's founder offers up close and personal exposure of some of the worlds best artist.

For more details on the event go to: www.musicinthebarns.com

For more information contact
musicinthebarns@gmail.com

Last Thursday, we had our AGO Picasso talk&tour. It was a new tour structure as we first has a private talk about Picasso - the talk was very engaging and explained beautifully some of the pieces in the exhibit. 30 moms with babies joined in for talk&tour.

With the introduction of the talk, it was a great way to get a glimpse into the exhibit and as we enjoyed the beautiful works we had the theory fresh in our minds.



The Picasso exhibit is on at the AGO for more details visit ago.net

One of my favorite things is to explore books with the kids. We walked into Kolkid and the goal was to find a book that explored different cities around the world and there it was a whole section of books by Miroslav Sasek, an illustrator who created a series of books featuring cities and countries from around the world.. The books he wrote painted a delightful and evocative picture of some of the world's great cities. We picked up – This is New York – having lived in New York for two years I was as excited as the kids to learn about the city as illustrated by M.Sasek in the 60's.



The illustrations are splendid, the featured places shows the city in all it's elements from its landmarks, its geography and its small wonders such as Macdougal Street. He touches on uptown, downtown, the bridges, the views from Brooklyn and much much more.

This is just the start, next is Paris, London, Rome...
Kolkid is located at 674 Queen St W – their site http://www.kolkid.ca/basic_index.html is under construction so I was unable to find it there.

For more about the M.Sasek collection here: http://www.miroslavsasek.com/index.html

The Contact Photography Festival is on through the month of May in Toronto. Not only are there fabulous photography exhibits all around the city but you can attend many talks and discussions happening in conjunction with the festival.

MOCCA is featuring Public: Collective Identity | Occupied Spaces. A fabulous exhibit showing the world we live in.

Enjoy.